When filmmaker Hansen Lin opened the door to a building in the borough of Queens, New York, he didn’t realize he was entering a portal to the immigrant experience in America.
Lin, producer of the award-winning documentary Always, was scouting a film project when he stumbled upon the edifice in the Chinatown section of Flushing.
“It’s completely dark outside, but the inside is really colorful,” he recalls. “It already has this mystery.”
Lin had inadvertently crossed the threshold into a Queens ballroom where Asian American seniors dance, socialize, and preserve something of the culture they left behind in coming to the U.S. That chance encounter set Lin on the quest to make a documentary, which he just pitched at the prestigious CPH:FORUM in Copenhagen. The film, which he’s directing and producing with Siyi Chen, is in a late stage of development.
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